Nesting

I'm in a nesting frenzy right now; anticipating, not a new baby, but the beginning of the school year. This is the first year that we are starting off with homeschooling in the fall (we took Kimball out of public school last November) and the first year that no one is participating in public school at all. Knowing how much time it takes up and wanting desperately to have a sense of order in my life and in my house, I spent last week on a massive organization task. I took everything out of the hall closet and only put back in things that pertain to our "Tiger" Academy (a name we use online to protect our real-life identities). Everything else had to find a new home or go to our friends at Deseret Industries.

Thus, all of our DVDs are now located in one of three DVD wallets. My dear husband insisted on keeping all of the cases "in case we ever want to sell them because they become collector's items." (Can I tell you how much I hate keeping things because they might become collector's items? And is it really possible, even if the Lord of the Rings Special Edition Trilogy is one day worth a small fortune, that I will be able to convince him to sell it and finance our children's college tuition? I doubt it. And yet, the domain of the garage is his and if he wants another box full of empty DVD cases out there with his old GI Joes and all of my junk important things that I don't use very often.)

Our winter coats are hanging in the closets of the people who wear them. Our vacuum is currently homeless, but I will find a spot for it by the end of the day. Our extra table leaves are in a spot in Ian's closet, thanks to his generosity.

And then there was a huge, unorganized pile of school things, some of which we used and some of which I'd only looked through once, put at the bottom of the pile, and never thought about again. Not to mention the 15 gallon bin full of our "daily school stuff", which didn't even fit in the closet, and the shelf in my closet that was overloaded with various resource books. (My mom gave me a lot of stuff when she was getting ready to retire from school teaching. None of it stolen from the government, I assure you!)

Now, the closet looks like this:I really should label the bins. If you care to know how I organized this, read on (those of you who don't homeschool can just skip the next few paragraphs.)

On the bottom, two hold math manipulatives and one holds small educational games that might be looked over if they were competing with the games in our game cupboard. In the middle, each boy has his own bin (in the color of his choosing) and notebook. The bins contain a journal, some workbooks, and a few other things depending on each child's needs. I'm not sure yet if I'll use the notebooks for finished work that we are proud of or for weekly assignments.

The third row from the bottom is pretty obvious. The caddies are low enough that the kids can grab them and bring them to where ever we are learning at that moment. There are four cups of crayons in the caddy, each with a color corresponding to the child's bin so that we don't need to fight over crayons. There are also scissors, colored pencils, and erasers in the crayon caddy. Another holds glue, tape, a stapler, markers, and rulers. The white board markers are in a small plastic box and a large pencil cup is already full of sharpened pencils, thanks to Henry's good efforts.

The top row of cubes contains a bin of craft supplies (which is sadly mostly empty at the moment. I'm not very crafty, but I'm really trying harder for my kids' sake); some extra supplies that I can dole out as needed; and all of my teacher's manuals for this year, which Jared says are far too heavy and are in danger of jeopardizing the entire structure, but I'm ignoring that. (Something which I will surely come to regret later, but that is right where I want the manuals. So there.) On top is writing paper, scratch paper, and math workbooks that they will use later in the year.

The shelf on top, which is barely visible in the photo, has books that I may use for resources. Ideas for math, language arts, unit studies, holiday craft activities, science, . . . . you get the idea. But now I can see them all, so I know just what I have and can put my hands on it quickly if I want it. Hurray!

The white board props up in front of the cubes when we aren't using it, which also makes it harder for Bronwen to get to the crayons if the door is accidentally left open. Crayons she likes to eat and markers she likes to use to give herself tatoos all over her body. We hope she gets that out of her system soon.

Now that this closet is finished, I'm torn between getting all my lesson plans figured out and getting my master bedroom decluttered. I will do both before school starts for us in a week and a half. Please hold me to that!:)

Back to my projects . . . .

Tagged Again

As if the purse post wasn't humiliating enough, Mahina has tagged me for a new, dreadful blog meme.

Let me first set the stage. Saturday morning was rather slow and lazy for me. I slept until 8:00 am, which felt luxurious and wonderful. I then got up and proceeded to putter, working on a little of this and a little of that. The whole day stretched out before me and I had things I wanted to accomplish, so I didn't worry about the messes my kids were making--or the ones that I was making. I figured that when we were finished making our messes we would clean them up. But not now. So I worked simultaneously on making pinto beans for 75 for the ward dinner, cycling laundry through the washer and dryer, and catching up on my blog reading. Occasionally, I would stop to handle one of the needs of my children, but I wasn't stressed about cleaning up breakfast or picking up legos. There was plenty of time for that.

I started reading Mahina's post about a tag where you take photos of specific places in your house without stopping to clean them up at all, and it occurred to me that I might want to finish reading it later, when my house was clean. I actually got up from the computer and walked away, but a few minutes later I was sitting there again (because I can't control myself) reading her post and reassuring myself that she wouldn't have tagged little old me. After all, I just had to do the purse post.

Alas, when I reached the end of her post, there was my name staring back at me.

I've decided that I don't care if you think less of me after seeing my dirty kitchen sink, my stacks of laundry, or my baby who was still playing in her strawberry-stained pajamas at 10:30 am. Everyone has moments when their house is less than perfect. I have them every day. I try to have my house look good at some point each day, but I wasn't lucky enough to have it be the time when I had to take pictures. That would have meant that I waited to read my favorite blogs until after I had done my work, which requires way more self control than I have on most days.

Okay, but that first statement is a lie. I do care what you think. I want everyone to love me, and that is the pathetic truth. So please don't leave me over this!:) I guess I've gone into full disclosure mode lately and have nothing left to hide from my readers once this is over. I will not respond to some sadistic tag to photograph my cellulite or the fillings in my teeth that scream "sweet tooth", so I guess this is the worst it will get.

So, without any more stalling, here is my life--at least what my life looked like at 10:30 am Saturday.

1. The Fridge.
Lucky for me, I generally do my grocery shopping on Friday, so by Saturday I had already disposed of nasty old leftovers (or crammed them farther to the back where you can't see them.) If you've been reading me for very long, you'll know that I heart my fridge. And I have tried harder than ever before in my life to actually clean it. My favorite things in my fridge/freezer right now? The assortment of sorbet pints that were on sale at Safeway-- I got Mango, Lemon, and Chocolate. And I'm not sharing.

2. The closet.

I have my own closet--our master bedroom does not have a coveted walk-in, but it does have two separate closets. The left side is nothing to brag about it, but there is some semblance of order. I try to keep it closed because Bronwen likes to get into the cube in my shoe rack that holds phonics boosk. The right side has, besides my dresses, my gift wrap box, my ironing pile, and a bunch of home school manuals and resource guides. Oh, and old purses and diaper bags stacked ever so neatly on the top shelf!And some books that I plan to give away on my blog at some point when I finally get around to hosting a contest.







3. The kitchen sink.

The huge bowl is out because I started making bread at 9:30 pm on Friday (It's too hot right now to bake during daylight hours) and by the time my bread was finished rising I was not interested in washing it. Thank goodness I didn't have to show you this


since I was working on the beans for the ward dinner and hadn't cleaned up breakfast yet. That was a close call!

4. The Toilet.

Jared actually forbade me to post this. You see, he is the neat freak in our relationship and balked at the idea of everyone in the free world looking at our toilet. I did choose the cleaner of our two toilets (the one not used by children) and I don't think that it looks bad, but I'm just banking on the fact that he rarely reads my blog. Besides, he knows better than to forbid me to do anything--I don't respond well to such tactics!

5. My favorite shoes.


I must say that I have a very difficult time choosing a favorite of anything good. I could never narrow down a favorite food, or ice cream flavor, child, or book. And shoes definitely fall in the category of "how could I just choose one?" So I pulled out the four pairs that I currently wear multiple times a week. If it had been winter, there would have been a pair of brown cowboy boots and a pair of red high-heeled boots. But they didn't fit in this picture and I haven't worn them for months. I really want to get a pair of the wedge espadrilles that everyone except for me is wearing this season. Except that two of my kids are in desperate need of new shoes and they have a better excuse since their feet actually grow.

6. Favorite Room.


I misunderstood and took a picture of our family's favorite room, which is where we spend the bulk of our time. That train table was my best furniture purchase to date, because it entertains for hours and has lots of storage room for toys. But my favorite room in our house to look at is the nursery, which we redecorated before Ian was born and added beadboarding and floor boards that are taller than 1 inch. Maybe I'll go take a picture of that one right now. On second thought, it has stuffed animals and board books spread all over the floor, so I'm not going to do that. Maybe some other day.

7. What my kids are doing right now:

Bronwen is following me around, begging me to read another book to her. I'm saying, "Just a minute, baby. Let me finish taking these pictures before it gets worse!"

The boys are out on the trampoline, which you can barely find for the weeds. Our backyard has been planned for a landscaping for three years. Thankfully, they haven't refused to play in it. I loved the pictures of Mahina's yard. Wow.

8. The laundry pile.


Thankfully, I spent some quality time folding laundry on Friday night while the bread was raising (Jared was bowling with some other guys, who had been set up by their wives to get out of the house.) I did not, however, deliver the piles of folded laundry to the drawers of my sleeping angels. So here they sit on my dresser (confession: it's Monday morning now and those piles are still there.)

9. Self Portrait.


That's as good as it's gonna get on a Saturday morning. I was not content with any of the pictures I took by myself of myself with my glasses on and no makeup. So now you can just see that I am in bad need of a pedicure. I think that was enough.

10. My dream vacation.


I'm not sure how this fits in with the others, except that after showing your dirty secrets to all of your friends and stalkers, you would surely want to escape to some far off place. There are so many places that I'd like to travel, but if I could plan one trip right now and money and time were not issues, I'd plan a trip to Istanbul, Athens, and all over Italy. (photos courtesy of Istanbul.com, Wikipedia, and Destination 360.)

So, instead of tagging anyone else and furthering the agony, I'll list who I almost tagged. That way, you can feel so relieved to have escaped the madness. Or, if you are just looking for something to blog about, you can take the challenge. And the winners are: Alli, Ordinary Mom, Macy, Morgan, and Mindyluwho.

True Love

I'm in love. The object of my new-found and undying affection is my new dishwasher. In a stroke of good fortune (actually a blessing I attribute to our policy to pay a full tithe,) we found out that a friend of ours was selling their slightly used, high-end, so-much-better-than-our-1980-model-that-it's-beyond-comparison dishwasher for a fraction of the retail price.
The installation, which appeared to be simple and straightforward, did throw us for a loop. It would have helped if the owner's manual had said something more than "Do not attempt to install without a certified Miele technician." I did manage to feed the kids that evening with the water turned off, but when Ian had a major blowout on the living room rug and I attempted to clean him up with only wet wipes, (while keeping the other kids out of the living room until I could clean up the carpet in there,) it became somewhat hysterical. We attempted to turn back on the water in order to shower him and water spewed all over the kitchen, soaking our 1980 vinyl flooring and 1980 oak cabinets. In the end, we did figure out how to get the water back on without the spray--I just had to remember to dump a bucket every 6 minutes while Jared made three trips to Home Depot.
But Good Fortune continued to smile upon us and the entire Elders' Quorum Presidency showed up for a meeting and assisted with the install. They got it to run as long as the garbage disposal was turned on!! We finally unplugged the garbage disposal until Darling Brother-in-law Flint the handyman/electrician/mechanic came over the next morning and put a new outlet plug in so that I didn't have to choose between a dishwasher and a garbage disposal.
We still haven't learned to comply with the owner's manual instructions that we should not rinse the plates, but at least we aren't completely washing dishes before putting them in. And I am in the process of teaching the kids how to load the dishwasher, which is so marvelous.
Stay tuned--I am composing a sonnet to the new fridge that we are expecting any day now!